Before the evening office, St Serf’s rings a touch. The band is chronically short, and guests of the parish take the vacant ropes; the method is unforgiving, and every hand upon a rope is a hand accounted for — every two seconds, for the whole of the touch. The tower proves everyone. The murder lives in the flaw the method cannot excuse.
The tower’s bells, numbered from the lightest as the method has them; the customs and the parish name them so. The treble is the first bell; the tenor, the last and heaviest.
Set down the rows as they were truly rung — touch a figure to change it. The opening rounds stand given; the line may be laid in first and corrected where the parish heard otherwise.
Set each ringer to a rope. The captain keeps his own.